Maybe overseas, but not here.
The abreviations only change from WST, CST & EST when daylight saving confusion kicks in.

That's another whole ball of wax. Trying to keep up with daylight savings time. Some people don't observe it. Also, when we here in the States are changing one way Australia is changing the other way. Spring here is fall there. UTC doesn't change but it helps to know which way someone is going when you try to tell them what time it is.

........... Trying to keep up with daylight savings time. Some people don't observe it. Also, when we here in the States are changing one way Australia is changing the other way. Spring here is fall there.

Yup and this one has been tossed around since the dawn of time ..... pun intended ..... and each tine it has, we always get back to a constant reference point, GMT/UTC (still mystifies me why some clown started up "UTC" its the same damn thing as "GMT" - talk about reinventing the ego wheel}.

UTC doesn't change but it helps to know which way someone is going when you try to tell them what time it is.

Sure does, and as more people get involved, and more discuss it yet again, we will have more understanding that the easiest way round the whole nightmare is a peg in the ground and refer everything to that peg (GMT/UTC) - then at least we only have two times (at least most do) to cope with, the summer and winter version which is only an hour apart.

Its not rocket science, and most get it when meeting up with it - the rest? Well I guess they will still go through life being an hour early or an hour late for work twice a year - aint that life :)

Yup and this one has been tossed around since the dawn of time ..... pun intended ..... and each tine it has, we always get back to a constant reference point, GMT/UTC (still mystifies me why some clown started up "UTC" its the same damn thing as "GMT" - talk about reinventing the ego wheel}.

They did it for the same reasons Historians quit using B.C./A.D. and went to BCE/CE when referring to dates: It's the Politically Correct thing to do.

Yup and this one has been tossed around since the dawn of time ..... pun intended ..... and each tine it has, we always get back to a constant reference point, GMT/UTC (still mystifies me why some clown started up "UTC" its the same damn thing as "GMT" - talk about reinventing the ego wheel}.

But GMT isn't UTC. Well maybe if you don't care about anything less than a couple of seconds difference. There are people who do.

GMT is based on how fast the earth turns. That isn't a stable rate.

UTC is based on how fast caesium vibrates. That is a stable rate.

Every so often UTC has to be adjusted to keep within a second of GMT. That is when you hear about a leap second.

But GMT isn't UTC. Well maybe if you don't care about anything less than a couple of seconds difference. There are people who do.

GMT is based on how fast the earth turns. That isn't a stable rate.

UTC is based on how fast caesium vibrates. That is a stable rate.

Every so often UTC has to be adjusted to keep within a second of GMT. That is when you hear about a leap second.

For 99.999% of people, a couple seconds difference between UTC and GMT has zero meaning and zero influence, and most doesn't even know there are a difference. Many doesn't even know there's anything called UTC.

If you're looking at the 100-meter sprint or something, a couple seconds is a huge difference, and everyone would see the difference.

The difference between the clocks being 06:57:46 or 06:57:47 on the other hand is for most irrelevant, the bus or train or whatever doesn't go exactly on the second anyway... Would guess, most peoples watches shows more than 1 seconds error from the "correct" time anyway...

"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

It's much better to use UTC +- than using any of these abbreviations that clearly isn't unique.

Unfortunately most people wouldn't know what UTC is (although they may have heard of GMT), let alone how many hours forward or back it is from their time zone.

My guess - aside from the earth rotation/caesium vibration bit - is that they came up with UTC to get away from the "Greenwich" that is in the GMT acronym.

The "UTC" acronym is from French words, BTW. In English, the acronym should be "CUT" for "Coordinated Universal Time".

If I remember my history the French wanted the Meridian to run through Paris
but as the British were more convincing/forceful(courtesy of Harrison's chronometer) we won that round,They never forgave us and Universal Co-ordinated Time sounds just as good to me.Old enough to know better(but)still young enough not to care

The "UTC" acronyom is from French words, BTW. In English, the acronym should be "CUT" for "Coordinated Universal Time".

Not quite. In English it would be CUT, and in French it would be TUC. They couldn't decide which to use, so as a compromise they picked a third alternative that is grammatically wrong in both languages :)Contribute to the Wiki!